Welcome to the land of saints and hoarders. The richest 300 people in Ireland have doubled their wealth from €50Bn to €100Bn in the last 7 years. That means the number of people who’d fit in a large pub have enough money to have paid the original bank bailout of €64Bn outright (and still be so rich they wouldn’t have to work a day).

This Saturday at 2pm, Right2Water has called a national anti-water charges protest through Dublin city starting at Connolly and Heuston Station. Many are seeing this as the final shot of the long war against the water charges, they have been suspended for the last year because a mass boycott made them impossible to collect.

That boycott was part of a massive decentralised campaign that also saw hundreds of direct actions as communites around the country blocked water meter installations, leading to hundreds of arrests and dozens of ongoing prosecutions. And Saturday is just one of many huge mobilisations that have brought as many as 80,000 onto the streets on multiple occasions.

The Workers Solidarity Movement have called an anarchist/anti-authoritarian bloc to join the Water Charges march Saturday 8th April in Dublin. This bloc will meet at Connolly Station at 2pm . Look out for the red and black flags. We will be handing out several hundred copies of this 4-page leaflet produced by the WSM, which includes content on the water charges, housing, and the pro-choice struggle, and are looking for folks to help us distribute these on the day. [PDF to download]

Many Battles Won, With the War Yet to Win

We’ve come a long way. Against the forces of the State and global finance the anti-water charges movement has held the line, and through years of direct action, community organising and mass mobilisations we’ve pushed the government to the point of defeat on water charges.

What would happen if Fine Gael had a change of heart? What if, having been visited by three ghosts the night before, Michael Noonan decided to address the misery brought on by the largest housing crisis in this nation’s history? It’s an interesting question, but of course it’ll never be answered. Still, thinking about it forces us to consider other questions. It leads us to a view of modern capitalism and international power relations which, if more unsettling than Scrooge Fine Gael, is a more solid understanding on which to build our offensive.

This is an analysis of events at Woodburn forest (Carrickfergus, County Antrim) during the exploratory drilling operation being carried out by the company Infrastrata in the spring and summer of 2016. It is intended as a reflection on the successes and failures of the campaign to resist a poisonous and violent extraction of resources from the land, and indeed the lease and seizure of some of that land in an aggressive manner. It draws on personal testimonies; both my own and other activists’ experiences of specific direct actions, set within a broader political analysis of the context within which this sort of struggle is taking place, locally and worldwide.

The WSM is not organising the 12th Dublin Anarchist Bookfair for the spring of 2017 as might be expected. Instead, we are organising an alternative event, the Anarchist Gathering.

The Anarchist Gathering 2017 will take place on Sunday, 23nd April, 10am-5pm in the Teacher’s Club (36, Parnell Square West, Dublin 1). Please reply to activity@wsm.ie to register your interest in attending. We are gathering to discuss how we can better organise and fight for a free society. We would hope that everyone actively interested in building anarchism in Ireland will attend.

The following piece maps out our thinking about the bookfair at the present moment.

This video shows some scenes from the successful Belfast Anti-Fascist demo that took place Saturday April 1st
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About 200 anti-fascists gathered to show the supposedly 30 or so supporters of the Ulster Defence League that while neither they nor their views are welcome here refugees certainly are.

In reality, the illustrious UDL 30 had no organised or visible attendance, with merely a couple of their brave warriors skulking around the edges, clearly humiliated by the overwhelming presence of anti-fascists.

For the most part, it is only workers inside the US who can take the necessary direct action against Trump. Only they can fight for the program which is necessary to defeat Trump, the old guard Republicans and the Democrats. Direct action against Trump may be possible for some workers outside the US (e.g. workers in US-owned corporations, workers supplying US military bases), but this is necessarily supplementary and guided by the tempo of US events.

For the most part, it is only workers inside the US who can take the necessary direct action against Trump. Only they can fight for the program which is necessary to defeat Trump, the old guard Republicans and the Democrats. Direct action against Trump may be possible for some workers outside the US (e.g. workers in US-owned corporations, workers supplying US military bases), but this is necessarily supplementary and guided by the tempo of US events.